Beginner Guide
Learn how to start your first dungeon, choose a Boss, recruit your starting minions, and establish a working colony. Follow the essential early-game priorities before expanding underground.
Malignus official demo trailer from Mossbomb · YouTube ↗
Build your own monster-filled dungeon, command six races of minions, and defend your treasure from invading adventurers. Explore Boss abilities, deadly traps, dark magic, and overworld raids in this dark fantasy colony simulator. Play solo or rule a shared dungeon with friends.
Start Here
Learn how to start your first dungeon, choose a Boss, recruit your starting minions, and establish a working colony. Follow the essential early-game priorities before expanding underground.
Discover how to dig new rooms, organize workshops, build storage areas, and design an efficient dungeon layout. Learn the building fundamentals needed to support your growing monster colony.
Understand the strengths of goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, and ogres. Learn how to manage food, beds, equipment, work priorities, and minion complaints to keep your dungeon functioning.
Protect your treasure using pressure plates, tripwires, dart throwers, spinning blades, fire traps, and other defensive systems. Learn how trap connections and dungeon layouts help your minions survive adventurer invasions.
FROM THE WIKI
Set up the Baleful Eye to fire toward a doorway, then compare reach, beam speed, and Petrifying Gaze from the Malignus preview.
Read guidebossesBuild a close-range Cinder Demon defense around its burning blade and ring of fire, with minions supporting the fight.
Read guidebossesFind Deep Reservoir, Necrotic Aura, and Phylactery in Boss Upgrades, then plan a defense around the aura and your skeletons.
Read guidebossesBuild around the Sunken Horror’s tentacle attack and the Devourer effect described in a Malignus preview.
Read guidebuildingPlan a compact Malignus dungeon with side rooms, filtered kitchen storage, and a throne room behind a defensible approach.
Read guidebuildingUse the Mine order to mark rock, let minions take the mining jobs, and plan construction on the cleared floor.
Read guidebuildingClaim buildable Domain space, build a throne room, and arrange your throne and treasure together in the Sanctum.
Read guidebuildingOpen a shelf’s Storage tab and use the filter tree to decide what haulers should bring to it.
Read guideMalignus Wiki
Malignus is a 2D dark fantasy dungeon colony simulator developed and published by Mossbomb for Windows PC. Instead of exploring a dungeon as a hero, you become its ruler and control the monsters living inside it. Dig underground chambers, construct workshops, manage minions, and defend your growing treasure hoard.
The game features six monster races, four playable Bosses, more than 30 wild creatures, and four schools of dark magic. Players can build automated traps, capture adventurers, tame underground creatures, and launch raids against settlements on the surface. Malignus supports solo play and cooperative dungeon management for two to four players.
Guides for building a dungeon, managing minions, setting traps, choosing a Boss, using magic, and raiding the overworld.
Learn how to start your first dungeon, choose a Boss, and establish a working monster colony in Malignus. This beginner guide covers starting minions, room construction, essential resources, and preparations for adventurer invasions.
Choose one of four playable Boss monsters. Each Boss has unique abilities that become stronger as your treasure hoard grows.
Select your four starting minions and distribute their starting stat points.
Order minions to dig through solid rock. Construct essential facilities such as beds, workshops, and storage areas.
Establish food supplies, sleeping spaces, and equipment for your minions. Monitor their needs and complaints.
Prepare defensive corridors with traps and guards. Adventurer invasions become more dangerous as the game progresses.
Discover how to design and expand your underground dungeon using mining orders, specialized rooms, workshops, and storage systems. Learn the construction mechanics that support resource management, monster housing, and defensive planning.
Use mining orders to designate sections of solid rock for excavation. Minions perform digging jobs to create new rooms.
Build essential facilities, including beds, workshops, and storage areas.
Establish production areas with crafting workstations such as anvils. Assign appropriate work priorities to minions.
Use storage filters to control which resources haulers deliver to particular shelves and storage areas.
Expand your dungeon with thrones, altars, specialized chambers, and defensive corridors.
Keep your dungeon running by managing monster needs, work assignments, equipment, and individual personalities. Malignus features minions with traits, relationships, complaints, and behavioral settings that influence colony management.
Minions require food, sleeping arrangements, and appropriate equipment. Neglecting their needs can contribute to colony management problems.
The Dungeon Duties system allows players to prioritize individual jobs, including mining, hunting, and guard duty.
The Dungeon Management interface includes a Grumbling page showing complaints and how many minions share them.
Individual minions have personal traits, social relationships, preferences, and potential breakdowns.
Minions have equipment slots and can carry items. Players can craft gear and inspect individual equipment.
The Behavior interface provides settings for how individual minions fight, flee, heal, and participate in different kinds of work.
Learn how Malignus traps work and explore the defensive devices available for protecting your dungeon. The game features multiple trap types that can be connected to pressure plates, tripwires, sensors, levers, and timers.
Dart throwers are projectile-based defensive traps. Official gameplay material demonstrates a dart trap connected to a pressure plate.
Spinning blade traps provide mechanical defenses. Official gameplay footage shows spinning blades striking invading adventurers.
Flamethrowers and flame-based traps are part of the game's defensive construction systems.
Gas traps release clouds into dungeon corridors. Official gameplay material shows gas traps operating during invasions.
Electric coils are among the available defensive devices, adding electrical attacks to the dungeon's traps.
Web and spider-themed traps are available. Official footage shows a spider trap releasing a swarm against adventurers.
Trap wiring supports pressure plates, tripwires, sensors, levers, and timers.
Explore the four playable Boss monsters in Malignus and discover their distinctive supernatural abilities. Boss powers grow with the dungeon's treasure hoard, making Boss selection and progression important parts of the game's strategy.
A playable Boss associated with necrotic powers and skeletons. Official material shows Necrotic Aura and upgrades including Deep Reservoir and Phylactery.
A playable Boss that uses powerful rays against enemies. Documented abilities include Annihilation Ray and Petrifying Gaze.
A fiery Boss shown fighting adventurers with a burning weapon and fire-based effects. Official footage demonstrates a destructive burst of flame when it dies.
One of four playable Boss monsters, shown in official gameplay material observing its dungeon while minions return treasure from an overworld raid.
Boss abilities become more powerful as treasure accumulates. Each Boss has upgrades available through the Boss upgrade interface.
Discover the six monster races that can serve in your Malignus dungeon: goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, and ogres. Each race brings different strengths, while individual minions have their own traits, personalities, and work-related characteristics.
One of six commandable monster races. Official screenshots show goblins working at cooking tables and crafting stations.
One of six available monster races. Individual characteristics and work suitability can be examined through the minion management systems.
An officially confirmed monster race that players can command as part of their dungeon colony.
One of the six commandable monster races, contributing to the variety of creatures within a dungeon colony.
One of six available races. Individual bugbears participate in the game's trait and colony management systems.
The sixth confirmed monster race. Players can manage individual ogres through the game's character and duty systems.
Explore the four schools of dark magic available in Malignus: Pyromancy, Electromancy, Necromancy, and Shadowmancy. Learn about the game's magical progression systems, rituals, and powerful boons offered through interactions with dark gods.
One of four official dark magic schools. The Dark Arts interface includes multiple levels of Pyromancy, and official gameplay demonstrates fire-based attacks.
An officially confirmed school associated with electrical powers. Gameplay screenshots demonstrate Chain Lightning striking enemies during combat.
One of four dark magic schools. Necromantic themes also appear in the Dread Lich's skeletons and Necrotic Aura.
The fourth confirmed dark magic school, included alongside Pyromancy, Electromancy, and Necromancy.
Players can perform dark rituals. The official Dark Arts interface includes sections for rites and magical crafting.
Players can construct altars and bargain with dark gods for boons. Official screenshots show an altar interface displaying a deity's blessings.
Learn how overworld raids expand your dungeon's influence beyond its underground chambers. Malignus allows players to send minions against surface settlements, command raids in real time, collect treasure, and prepare for increasingly dangerous adventurer invasions.
Explore the Overworld system, which represents locations outside your dungeon on a hex-based map. Official screenshots show settlements and monster groups revealed through scrying.
Send minions into the overworld to attack settlements and acquire treasure.
Command your forces during raids in real time. Official gameplay shows minions fighting settlement defenders and using magical attacks.
Bring captured treasure back to your underground dungeon. The growing hoard contributes to your dungeon's wealth and Boss progression.
Prepare for retaliation from adventurers. Enemy invasions become more dangerous over time, featuring adventurers from six races and ten classes.
The Malignus demo, co-op, and planned Early Access launch.
Malignus is a 2D dungeon colony simulator by Mossbomb. Choose a Boss monster, build a dungeon, manage minions and defend the treasure they bring home.
Yes. Mossbomb offers a free Steam demo and describes it as the beta for the current game.
Yes. Malignus supports solo play and two to four players in one shared dungeon.
Mossbomb announced November 13, 2026 for Steam Early Access.
From carving your first underground chamber to commanding powerful Bosses and defending against invading adventurers, our Malignus guides help you build a thriving dungeon. Explore monster races, dungeon layouts, dark magic, traps, and raid strategies to become a more effective dungeon ruler.
Read the Beginner Guide